BARCELONA ’92 OLYMPICS : SUMMER GAMES SPOTLIGHT : ATHLETES EXPERIENCE BRUSH WITH BEAUTY

Carl Lewis stopped by to add an artistic touch, and Cuba’s Teofilo Stevenson did, too.

Athletes visit the Foundation for Hospital Art in the athletes’ village to paint their flag on a mural of 172 nations or the mural of the individual nations.

When the Games are over, the paintings go out to hospitals around the world. It’s a foundation headed by John Feight of Atlanta to add something bright to the sterile white of hospital decor--2,000 hospitals in 88 countries so far. Memorial Sloan-Kettering of New York is one of the previous recipients.

Lewis painted an American flag and autographed the border, as did former boxer Stevenson.

Feight took the official flags from a current book, but when a Bulgarian athlete did his country’s flag, he knowingly painted out the red star in the middle.

“They are changing,” Feight said, “even as we speak.”

This a daily roundup of Olympic-related items from reporters in Barcelona from the Los Angeles Times, Newsday, Baltimore Sun and Hartford Courant, all Times-Mirror newspapers.